One Pot After Another Two Prose Poems by Keith Nunes

One Pot After Another

always the flower pots on the veranda, the whiter than white sheets and the order of business in the dining room, you poke around in the bedroom but after some years you don’t care who you’re pleasing because the face under you belongs to your dead sister, no-one explains that you’re evolving into something that resembles a river stone but without the same interesting history, you’re of little significance but they like a titter now and again because you’ve got toilet paper hanging from your fly, somehow you knew standing on the primary school steps you’d have to pretend but circling this running track has made you dizzy and what about those hurdles

Altered Scenes from the Battleground

I’m a casualty–dragged off the frontline with a searing brain no-one can find, exhausted but there’s plenty of inviolable umbrellas, my buddy with the napalm beard keeps winning chess but has close contact with a thousand STDs, then Ruby rings … hyped through the ether dangling symmetry and micro pubic hair coverings, barn doors are blown and the dug-in enemy offer love letters, it’s an unusual sight as I write Dad, featuring floating colonies of musicians and a flag made of insect hides, I’ll be on the midnight train so bring a lifesaver–I’m drowning in sentimentality and packing apologies, and yes, the scenery is coming with me

Keith Nunes is from Lake Rotoma, New Zealand. He was a newspaper sub-editor for 20-plus years but after a nervous breakdown he moved into rural squalor and writes for the sheer joy of it. He’s been published around NZ and increasingly in the UK and US (including Unbroken). He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and his chapbook Crashing the Calliope is sold by the lunatic fringe.